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I have a lot of friends who are filmmakers. I even worked briefly in that industry myself. Who knows, I might even get back into it.

I wrote this piece specifically for a magazine for documentary filmmakers, but I think the advice could be helpful to anyone who uses video to sell.

Give it away smart – Advice for filmmakers

Twelve years ago, I organized and sponsored the first conference on the
subject of the commercial potential of the World Wide Web.

Our sponsors and supporters included Pacific Bell, a then-obscure
twenty-person company called Netscape, the International Interactive
Communications Society – and the National Alliance of Media Arts and
Culture.

Why did I make a special effort to get independent film makers involved
in this formative effort to kick start the Internet revolution?

I can tell you from first hand experience that NO ONE in the spring of 1994 had any idea how to use the web to advertise.

I know that because at the time I was in regular communication with the inventor of the web browser (Marc Andreessen) and he had no idea and if he hadn’t heard a bright idea from someone, somewhere on the topic, the answer was not out there.

Dave Taylor had identified the opportunity in online catalogs and was publishing what was then the ONLY guide to online stores, but beyond that we were all drawing a blank.

Interestingly though, one of the ideas that Marc had way back then is finally coming into its own…

New addition: Now Google Video lets you see how many times a particular video has been viewed, both cummulatively and yesterday.

This is big stuff because traditionally Google likes to keep its traffic data to itself. In some cases, when you’re doing business with them, they’ll let you see your own data, but that’s as far as they go.

For Google to open their video data to the world shows what an important piece showing the "ratings" are when it comes making the new video-sharing medium click.

By the way, Google Video now accounts for 2% of Google’s traffic. Not a big percentage, but in absolute terms, a whole lot of action.